Cleisthenes
Encyclopedia
Cleisthenes was a noble Athenian
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 of the Alcmaeonid
Alcmaeonidae
The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens, a branch of the Neleides who claimed descent from the mythological Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor....

 family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 and setting it on a democratic
Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model,...

 footing in 508/7 BC. For these accomplishments, historians refer to him as "the father of Athenian democracy." He was the maternal grandson of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon
Cleisthenes of Sicyon
Cleisthenes was the tyrant of Sicyon from c. 600–570 BC, who aided in the First Sacred War against Kirrha that destroyed that city in 595 BC. He is also told to have organized with success a war against Argos because of his anti-Dorian feelings...

, as the younger son of the latter's daughter Agariste
Agariste of Sicyon
Agariste was the daughter, and possibly the heiress, of the tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes. Her father wanted to marry her to the best of the Hellenes and, subsequently, he organized a competition, whose prize was his own daughter...

 and her husband Megacles
Megacles
Megacles was the name of several notable men of ancient Athens:1. Megacles was possibly a legendary Archon of Athens from 922 BC to 892 BC....

. Also, he was credited for increasing power of assembly and he also broke up power of nobility for Athens.

Biography

Cleisthenes was the uncle of Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...

' mother Agariste and of Alcibiades
Alcibiades
Alcibiades, son of Clinias, from the deme of Scambonidae , was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War...

' maternal grandfather Megacles.

Rise to power

With help from the Alcmaeonidae
Alcmaeonidae
The Alcmaeonidae or Alcmaeonids were a powerful noble family of ancient Athens, a branch of the Neleides who claimed descent from the mythological Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor....

 (Cleisthenes' genos, "clan"), he was responsible for overthrowing Hippias
Hippias (son of Pisistratus)
Hippias of Athens was one of the sons of Peisistratus, and was tyrant of Athens in the 6th century BC.Hippias succeeded Peisistratus in 527 BC, and in 525 BC he introduced a new system of coinage in Athens. His brother Hipparchus, who may have ruled jointly with him, was murdered by Harmodius and...

, the tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...

 son of Pisistratus
Peisistratos (Athens)
Peisistratos was a tyrant of Athens from 546 to 527/8 BC. His legacy lies primarily in his institution of the Panathenaic Festival and the consequent first attempt at producing a definitive version for Homeric epics. Peisistratos' championing of the lower class of Athens, the Hyperakrioi, can be...

. After the collapse of Hippias' tyranny, Isagoras
Isagoras
Isagoras , son of Tisander, was an Athenian aristocrat in the late 6th century BC.He had remained in Athens during the tyranny of Hippias, but after Hippias was overthrown, he became involved in a struggle for power with Cleisthenes, a fellow aristocrat. In 508 BC he was elected archon eponymous,...

 and Cleisthenes were rivals for power, but Isagoras won the upper hand by appealing to the Spartan king Cleomenes I
Cleomenes I
Cleomenes or Kleomenes was an Agiad King of Sparta in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. During his reign, which started around 520 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the...

 to help him expel Cleisthenes. He did so on the pretext of the Alcmaeonid curse. Consequently, Cleisthenes left Athens as an exile, and Isagoras was unrivaled in power within the city. Isagoras set about uprooting hundreds of people from their homes on the pretext that they too were cursed, and attempted to dissolve the council (βουλή, boulê). However, the council resisted, and the Athenian people declared their support of it. Hence Isagoras and his supporters were forced to flee to the Acropolis
Acropolis
Acropolis means "high city" in Greek, literally city on the extremity and is usually translated into English as Citadel . For purposes of defense, early people naturally chose elevated ground to build a new settlement, frequently a hill with precipitous sides...

, remaining besieged there for two days. On the third, they fled and were banished. Cleisthenes was subsequently recalled, along with hundreds of exiles, and he assumed leadership of Athens.

Contributions

After this victory Cleisthenes began to reform the government of Athens. In order to forestall strife between the traditional clans, which had led to the tyranny in the first place, he changed the political organization from the four traditional tribes, which were based on family relations, into ten tribes according to their area of residence (their deme
Deme
In Ancient Greece, a deme or demos was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in...

). Most modern historians suppose there were 139 demes (this is still a matter of debate), organized into thirty groups called trittyes ("thirds"), with ten demes divided among three regions in each trittyes (a city region, asty; a coastal region, paralia; and an inland region, mesogeia). Cleisthenes also abolished patronymics in favour of demonymics (a name given according to the deme to which one belongs), thus increasing Athenians' sense of belonging to a deme. He also established legislative bodies run by individuals chosen by lottery, a true test of real democracy, rather than kinship or heredity. He reorganized the Boule
Boule (Ancient Greece)
In cities of ancient Greece, the boule meaning to will ) was a council of citizens appointed to run daily affairs of the city...

, created with 400 members under Solon
Solon
Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...

, so that it had 500 members, 50 from each tribe. He also introduced the bouletic oath, "To advise according to the laws what was best for the people". The court system (Dikasteria — law courts) was reorganized and had from 201–5001 jurors selected each day, up to 500 from each tribe. It was the role of the Boule to propose laws to the assembly of voters, who convened in Athens around forty times a year for this purpose. The bills proposed could be rejected, passed or returned for amendments by the assembly.

Cleisthenes also may have introduced ostracism (first used in 487 BC
487 BC
Year 487 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sicinius and Aquillius...

), whereby a vote from more than 6,000 of the citizens would exile a citizen for 10 years. The initial trend was to vote for a citizen deemed a threat to the democracy e.g. by having ambitions to set himself up as tyrant. However, soon after, any citizen judged to have too much power in the city tended to be targeted for exile (e.g. Xanthippus in 485/84 BC). Under this system, the exiled man's property was maintained, but he was not physically in the city where he could possibly create a new tyranny.

Cleisthenes called these reforms isonomia
Isonomia
Isonomia was a word used by Ancient Greek writers such as Herodotus and Thucydides to refer to some kind of popular government...

("equality vis à vis law", iso=equality; nomos=law), instead of demokratia
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

. Soon after his reforms his life becomes a mystery, as no ancient texts mention him thereafter. It is possible that Cleisthenes himself suffered ostracism, for seeking support from the Persians against the Spartans.

Cleisthenes' ideas revolutionised the way of thinking in Hellas at the time. But even Cleisthenes could not bring full change to Athens, and old institutions of the rich aristoi
Aristoi
Aristoi comes from Ancient Greek and means "the best". The term was used to describe the noblemen in ancient Greece, those of a status above the common people. Aristoi were members of the aristocracy and regarded as possessing the trait of Arete; a 'right nature'.Ancient Greek word for the social...

 still existed, such as the areopagus
Areopagus
The Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the "Rock of Ares", north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios .The origin...

. However, some scholars would argue that modern day western politics are shaped by his work.

Primary sources

. See original text in Perseus program.

External links

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